Author: Jo B

Chasing Ghosts

Designated Company was a work-in-progress commissioned by Turf Projects in July 2024. It was performed at 6 out of the 158 bus stops without seats or shelters in Croydon to highlight that travel in our Borough has not been fully accessible since 2021. I read the planning reports which are more for “advertising” than “people”, […]

Why is Croydon shaped the way it is today?

  Why is Croydon shaped the way it is today? Why are the public spaces where they are in the borough? Let’s explore the history of major changes in the landscape of central Croydon.  By understanding some of the issues of the past, we can understand a little more about how decisions are made around […]

A Light That Never Goes Out

  There’s something I’d like to try   This is an experiment, a rabbit hole. Go with me.   In Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (1993) British historian E.P. Thompson explores how land use and ownership was shaped by the evolving relationship between customs and law, influencing the development of English law […]

Tactile Boundaries

The Hug a Hoodie bean bag sculptures featured in Turf Project’s Squidgy World exhibition lie unassumingly on the floor. Created by Yolanda Shields – also known as Milktooth – the sculptures reflect the negotiation of touch on multiple levels in the artist’s life. These sculptures navigate the boundaries between touch and art, and the boundaries […]

Devotional Work

Analysing the power structures of a monastery in a documentary edited at a post-house in Soho. At Belmont Abbey in Hereford, Father Alex creates a tempera with egg yolk to bind together the pigment in his latest icon, a gold leaf painting of Archangel Michael. Meanwhile, Brother Bernard shuffles past an unnamed monk polishing the […]

My DPS year

On relationships, personal experience of life and the things I didn’t know were part of my art practice.   Rather unexpectedly, I have thrown myself into a year of contemplation and of gaining experience in the ‘industry’ – all followed by the struggle to find placements. Although all of the above were a part of […]

Croydon Surrounds, Suburban Release

  As part of ‘Cultivate That’ I have been researching various strands of Croydon as an urban landscape, one that shaped me and one that I think has plenty to offer in illuminating wider concerns. Some of these concerns include the production of culture in post-war Britain, urban development and suburbia as outer-city, ways of […]

Now Is The Time of Monsters: Croydon’s Exquisite Corpse

Once upon a rainy day in Croydon, there was a Beast.